Shooterfish can decide when to shoot and when not to

Member of Parliament the bar shooting has now been discussed in court. Humans are not the only animals that know how to calculate the trajectories of flying objects and use this skill thoughtfully in their everyday life.

The toughest pistol hero of the animal kingdom is the shooter fish. Although its brain does not have the higher functions typical of advanced primates, it is capable of making startlingly weighted firing decisions.

Shooter fish ( Toxotidae ) live in Southeast Asia and Oceania. They are able to drop insects directly from the flight with precisely aimed water jets. The fish positions itself on the surface of the water, sifts for a moment and injects a water projectile from its mouth, which hits the target directly from up to three meters away.

According to the story, once upon a time in India, at dusk, a colonist lit a cigarette on the bank of a river and a sharpshooter fish sprayed it out. Maybe the fish mistook the glowing tobacco for a firefly. Whether the story is true is another matter, but this is how the abilities of these shooter fish have been experienced in history.

Shooterfish can decide when to shoot and when not to. A full-grown fish usually hits its target the first time.

Shooting accuracy is amazing also because the fish has to take into account the distortion caused by the refraction of light on the surface of the water. When viewed underwater, the bug therefore appears to be in a slightly different place than it is. The challenge can be compared to a person trying to aim accurately while drunk.

What’s even more amazing is that the fish can even estimate how far away the target is from underwater. It has to decide how much pressure to put into the water jet so that the “projectile” hits the target with just the right amount of force.

Shooter fish is very cooperative in research, and has been studied a lot.

When faced with a choice situation, the fish communicates by shooting. It can be easily trained to recognize different figures and shapes. Between the alternatives, the fish decides which one to shoot. In studies, the fish has even learned to distinguish between faces.

The fish is capable of all this, even though it does not have a developed visual cortex. The shooter fish has taught us that fish are probably smarter than we thought.